Koo, the Indian social media platform aiming to rival Elon Musk’s X, is closing down after acquisition talks with Dailyhunt fell through.
Despite securing over $60 million in investments from prominent backers like Tiger Global and Accel, Koo struggled to expand its user base and generate revenue over the past two years.
In February, TechCrunch reported that Koo was negotiating a potential sale with Dailyhunt, a $5 billion internet media startup. However, Koo’s founders confirmed on Wednesday that these discussions did not lead to an agreement.
“We explored partnerships with multiple larger internet companies, conglomerates and media houses but these talks didn’t yield the outcome we wanted. Most of them didn’t want to deal with user generated content and the wild nature of a social media company,” Koo co-founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka said in a LinkedIn post on July 3.
“A couple of them changed priority almost close to signing. While we would’ve liked to keep the app running, the cost of technology services to keep a social media app running is high and we’ve had to take this tough decision” he said.
Koo’s strategy focused on attracting Indian users by offering a platform similar to X, supporting multiple local languages. The platform initially gained momentum during a dispute between Twitter and the Indian government.
Koo’s rapid ascent The dispute emerged when Twitter resisted the Indian government’s opaque requests for content removal. This led to accusations from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey that the government had threatened to shut down the social network and raid its employees’ homes.
The Indian government denied these allegations, with a top minister accusing Dorsey of attempting to downplay a contentious period in Twitter’s history.